Seattle police chief testifies before City Council panel on city’s violence

Seattle police chief testifies before City Council panel on city’s violence

SEATTLE — Seattle Police Chief John Diaz and his commanders testified before a Seattle City Council panel Wednesday about violence in the city, which has seen 21 slayings so far this year.

Before city leaders and commanders spoke, there was a plea from a Seattle grandfather.

“I need the safety,” resident Jack Smith said. “I need to get up, a 70-year-old man, and get out of bed and know that I’m not going to get shot or my 6-year-old grandson is not going to get shot. I need to know that.”

I have always heard it said; “There is no fool like an OLD fool”, and I hate to call Jack Smith a *fool*, but if he’s NOT a fool he is incredibly naive, and you would think that somewhere along the way in his 70 years he would have developed a bit of common sense.

We would ALL love to know, with 100% certainty, that we, or a loved one, won’t be shot some day, the difference between Smith and myself is this; I am a realist, Mr. Smith is NOT.

There are NO certainties in life, save death and taxes. I don’t want to sound mean, but those are the facts.

Mr. Smith, and so many like him, need to wake up and smell the coffee; you could be hit by a car, a truck, lightening, a tree limb, whatever the case may be, there are NO guarantees in this life. I mean NONE! If your time on this Earth is not up you can be in the middle of biggest shootout ever, an earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, tornado or any other disaster that kills a multitude of people, and you will walk away, if it’s not YOUR TIME TO GO!

Gazelle Williams knows more than she would like to about gun violence — in February her nephew, Desmond Jackson, was shot and killed outside Club X in the SoDo District. His killer has not been found.

“I think it’s pretty bad. I think it’s pretty sad that so many people are losing their lives and then there are a lot of family victims who remain to suffer,” Williams said.

Sad? Sure, it’s sad. The loss of a loved one is NEVER easy to take but here is a bit of truth that no one mentions in this story; LEGAL, safe, sane and responsible gun owners are NOT the ones that are committing these crimes.

POW! There it is, a HUGE dose of TexasFred TRUTH and you can bet your bottom dollar, the anti-gun people will whine and cry, saying ‘if no one had guns, no one would be getting killed’, and that is one of the most incredibly STUPID arguments I have ever heard.

The anti-gun people will automatically assume that if ALL guns are banned, somehow, magically, ALL gun crime will vanish.

It won’t.

If guns were totally banned in this nation the only people turning guns in would be those that haven’t got a lick of sense to call their own.

Think about this; IF honest folks, peaceful gun owners that only use their guns for sport shooting, hunting or self defense turned in their guns, that would leave them unarmed and basically defenseless against the criminal element that will NEVER surrender their guns.

We hear the old adage, *when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns*, and there is nothing but truth in that statement.

Sadly, if the government were to ever ban guns, or TRY to ban guns, there would be many that fall into the above mentioned group of folks that are hunters, sport shooters or self defense advocates that would instantly become outlaws.

I am one of those shooters that has NO intention of EVER peaceably handing over MY guns and I have NO FEAR about posting such.

Committee Chairman Bruce Harrell asked what can be done to stop the violence. Diaz bluntly told him that the best efforts of the police department may never be enough.

And that my friends explains why people like myself, all of my friends and the majority of my readers will NOT go quietly into the night!

As most everyone knows, I am an ardent supporter of Law Enforcement, but again with an old adage; ‘I carry a gun because a Cop is too heavy’ immediately comes to mind.

You can use a bit of humor to justify the carrying of a gun, but here is the TRUTH; in most circumstances, when the chips are down and every second counts and the decisions we make mean the difference between life or death, the Police are only minutes away.

I don’t say that to criticize our Law Enforcement Officers in any way, it is simply a matter of speaking the truth.

The Police, in SO many cases, do NOT prevent crimes, especially those *heat of the moment* actions or the case where some street cretin decides that you or your home look like an easy mark.

The Police will come and take a report, hopefully they can get finger prints and make an identification followed by an arrest, but there is little, if anything an Officer can do to protect you and your property. That is YOUR responsibility.

Here’s another little *gem* for you; Police Officers don’t carry a gun to protect YOU, they carry a gun to protect themselves, and I have NO problem with that, they have families to go home to, their lives are valuable, they have families that want them to come home at the end of the shift as well.

I have a great friend that has been a Trooper for many years, and he KNOWS I carry a gun, and he has no problem with it, here’s why; he told me once that if we were going to be out running around, going to eat, going to have coffee, whatever, that if the SHTF he would try his best to protect ME, but HIS safety was 1st and foremost in his mind.

I have no problem with that either, but it clearly defines WHY I personally carry a gun. I am going to try and protect my friend, but Fred comes 1st!

Legal gun owners aren’t going out *banging* in *Da hood*, we’re not the ones that steal guns, we’re not the ones that are buying or selling drugs and committing armed robberies, rapes, murders and such, but until such time as we have 100% total, guaranteed Police protection, at ALL times, it is MY responsibility to make sure that if the SHTF I can defend me too!

And honestly, do we even WANT 100% total, guaranteed Police protection? At ALL times? Wouldn’t that be called a *Police State*?

Most Officers that I know don’t want that in their lives either.

There is a simple solution, and the anti-gun nuts, Libbers and Bleeding Hearts will not like what I am about to say, but if this nation took a hard-line stance on crime, if criminals were punished severely, and swiftly, if criminals caught in the act of committing a gun crime were shot and killed, ON THE SPOT, if rapists and child molesters were HUNG in public, if the punishment matched the severity of the crime, before too long we would have a law abiding society that was indeed much safer and a lot more polite!

Will that ever happen? I doubt it, our nation, our citizens, legislators and Judges are all far too politically correct to allow it.

7 Responses to Seattle police chief testifies before City Council panel on city’s violence

These folks either do not live in the ‘real’ world … or they simply ignore it. Maybe bad things don’t happen where they conduct their daily business, but I doubt it. The Hollywood types or the pols that are so against guns and 2nd amendment rights – how many of these folks that are against others having guns have their own guns or a bodyguard?

I was on temporary duty at McChord AFB, which is right outside of Seattle, back in 1994. During our in brief, the briefer drew a line on a map and told us, should we rent a car, that under no circumstances should we cross the other side of that line, even on the interstates as there’s a good chance you’ll be shot at. Watching the local evening news one night, they talked about a gang whose initiation was to kill a white person and for people to be wary of where they go. They’ve always had these problems with gangbangers but like all liberals, their solution is to punish the law abiding.

Motor vehicles kill more people each year than firearms, and that is a supported statistical fact. And just as it is the nut behind the wheel that causes the killing or the maiming, it is also the nut behind the gun that causes the killing or the wounding.

Motor vehicles and guns are inanimate objects that can do no harm unless being utilized by a human operator. Rarely is this simple truth put out into the public arena where the hysterical gun control nuts may actually be made to think about their compulsive and defective paranoia concerning firearms. The same people who abhor guns are the same people who pack up their family into a motor vehicle and think nothing about hitting the Freeway at dangerous speeds while placing their own lives at risk of death or serious injury, and that of their entire family.

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people, and firearms are just one of the many kinds of weaponry that is available to carry out it out.

The anti-gun lobbyists need to have those simple truths shoved in their faces every time they get the urge to ban firearms.

In 2005 SCOTUS ruled that the police have NO duty to protect citizens, their duty is investigate After the Fact. Think about that! That sort of blows the gun control idiots arguments out of the water. Tell your liberal gun hating friends that and when they call you nuts give them the ruling. Maybe, just maybe, they will wake up.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=1

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